I got my first bad review a few days ago, of Shy and Mighty. My reaction was initially one of outrage: “how could this guy I’ve never heard of not like my music?” To make matters worse, the one track he singled out as worth­while— Flir­ta­tion Avenue— is the one that‘s kind of purposely “bad”. (No account­ing for taste, I suppose.) After receiv­ing a few condo­lences from friends who’d seen the writeup, I began to see the issue more philo­soph­i­cally. In fact, why would I want entirely good reviews? If one’s music is a little bit polar­iz­ing, isn’t that a good thing? My god, I have friends who don’t even like Brahms, so what hope do I have?